Friday, September 30, 2005

There’s quite a stir in the blogosphere over a paper released by Gregory S. Paul that purports to show that religion causes pathological problems in industrialized nations, and it is only a matter of time before it hits the mainstream waves. Skimming through the study, vitriolic anti-Americanism stands out. In a nutshell, the paper shows the US, which has next to Portugal the highest rates of belief in a Creator and lowest levels of acceptance of evolution of the industrialized nations also has the highest rate of homicide and abortion and the lowest life expectancy.

Here are the countries the study looked at: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland/Netherlands, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Portugal, Austria, Spain, Italy, US, Sweden, and New Zealand. Think the baby Jesus is to blame for all this? The high-priests of secularized Cultural Marxism would have you think so. Even though I am not a religious person and am a strong believer in evolution, this sort of tendentious BS has to be challenged. Unfortunately, race is that challenger, although the groups that struggle are completely inculpable for the sake of what I am arguing here.

East Asians have the lowest crime rates of any group of people on the planet, and not surprisingly, Japan basically scores the best on every measure. In the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan (an urban area)—a disaster which killed 5,000 people and left 310,000 homeless—there were literally no assaults or murders reported. We can leave Japan, an anomaly compared to the other countries, at this.

Australia—less than 1%Canada—2.8%Denmark--.7%Great Britain—2.2%France—estimated at 3% (no official Census)Germany—less than 1%Holland/Netherlands--not mentionedIreland (all the links are on wikipedia, it’s getting too tedious!)—not mentioned Switzerland—grouped into 26 cantons, the Swiss do not keep demographic statsNorway--everyone is white as snow in the Nordic countries (not mentioned)Portugal—less than 1%Austria—not mentionedSpain—not mentionedItaly—not mentionedUS—13%Sweden--everyone is white as snow in the Nordic countries (not mentioned, although might be able to find something at the government’s stat website)New Zealand—Africans, Latin Americans, and Middle Easterners combined comprise .8%

The homicide rate per 100,000 people falls between half a person and two people for all the countries except for Portugal (4) and the US (6). If 10% of the US population that is black committed murder at the rate of US whites, the homicide rate drops to under four per 100,000. The violent crime rate for Hispanics is 3.7 times that of whites—reducing the violent crime rate of Hispanics to the white level in the US would further reduce the homicide rate per 100,000 to under three. The other factor is American gun ownership. Murder by firearm in the US is 100 times higher than the next country on the list (Portugal), and there are over 200 million guns in the US—no other country listed even comes close. The gun debate is not one I am familiar enough with to have an educated opinion on, although it seems the New Orleans melee may have settled the Second Amendment issue in the US once and for all (it will stand). What the paper does not mention is how crime in the US has been on a downward trend while in most of Europe it has been on the upswing. According to UN statistics, the US is at the bottom-middle of the pack on violent crime, car theft, and overall victimization rates (flip through to see the graphs). Homicide is the only category in which the US leads the pack. Steve Sailer has chronicled laddism in England, and the subsequent increase in criminality among worker class Brits that has coincided with that country's recent crime problems.

The paper inflates rates of abortion, infant mortality rates, and adolescent pregnancies in the same way (blacks are 3 times as likely to abort as whites and Hispanics are 2.5 times as likely). Applying the same rate for blacks and Hispanics as whites in the US yields 20 abortions per US woman aged 15-19 (the stats the paper used) down from 28 with the various ethnic groups. This would put the US right smack in the middle of the pack.The infant mortality rate for blacks is three times that of whites (with Hispanics included in the white calculation!). Putting Hispanics right in between the rates of whites and blacks (as tends to be the case for the stats) drops the infant mortality rate per 1,000 births in the US from eight to under six—again, right smack in the middle of the pack.

The average life expectancy for whites in the US is 77.6 years, while the country's average for all Americans is a bit lower at 77 years even. While that sounds trivial, it moves the US from fourteenth of eighteen in longevity to tenth out of eighteen--yet again in the middle of the pack.

Of course, the paper makes no mention of racial disparities between the countries, out of either irrational belief in that making no difference (even though the statistics clearly show otherwise) or surreptitiously shoving it under the rug knowing that fundamentalist-loathing media will unscrupulously run with it anyway.

While there likely does exist a negative correlation between a population’s intelligence and religiosity, religion is overwhelmingly a positive force for most people. This seemingly contradictory statement makes sense if one assumes inherent differences in people. Think of intelligence, for simplicity’s sake, as an age continuum of children with the older ones representing the more cognitively gifted among humans. There is a sixteen, ten, and six year-old present. The sixteen year-old feels insulted if you try to tell her she had better be good because if she’s not, Santa won’t bring her any presents. She wants a pragmatic and humanistic explanation as to why she should be nice to other people. The ten year-old believes in Santa, but wants to know why the jolly guy wants people to be nice to one another—a sort of in between stage. The six year-old, enticed by presents, will likely behave if he thinks there are presents on the line. But tell him he should be good because self-restraint is fulfilling in itself and it makes the world a better place... you’re a fool if you expect an angel. It is important to distinguish between religiosity and belief in God (either the omniscient, benevolent and omnipotent or merely the philosopher’s)—I am referring to the rote, ritualistic aspects of religion and a rule-based lifestyle based on its teachings.

Affluent lefties, like those sympathetic to religion-bashing, quixotically believe that all people are the same and that religion restricts ones right to think for oneself, gives power to a deity rather than the state, etc. That black imprisonment rates are the lowest in the South (surprising but true) where Pentecostal Congregationalism is part of the cultural ethos and highest in liberal areas like Minnesota and Washington DC does not phase them in their assault on religion.

Superciliously, Paul mentions US economic dominance but only to say that this should lead to lower negatives for the US relative to the other countries. Perhaps he missed a little phenomenon known as the Protestant work ethic. Simply unbelievable that such charlatanism passes as academic expertise. Forget any inklings you may have of me blaming blacks or Hispanics for the situation they are in--for the purpose of right now, assume that it is all because of white oppression, hegemony, and the legacy of slavery. The point is, the demarcation between groups is loud and clear, yet Jesus himself is being crucified for the problems!

Save for Spain, Europe has been moving to the right. Tony Blair was beat up by the Conservative Party in Britain when he was narrowly reelected last Spring, Angela Merkel received more votes than Schroeder in Germany, the uber-liberal Netherlands has cracked down on Islamic immigration and freedoms, and in Poland two right-of-center parties united to take a majority away from the former left-wing government. Europeanesque elitists notoriously hate the US, and this paper epitomizes that. It is intellectually bankrupt in leaving out of analysis areas that the US excels in—economic prosperity, charitable giving, non-homicidal crime, etc—and fails to mention several much more plausible explanations for the divergence in some select areas like gun ownership and minority composition for homicide rates. Be weary of what you read. Be very weary.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Jared Diamond has become the media’s new darling with his theory that humanity’s modern makeup is a product of certain groups being in the right place at the right time. The sentiment certainly seems plausible enough. But it is absurd to believe that 100,000 years of life in totally different environments has left human populations the same, and that the various evolutionary forces did not build upon one another as natural selection rewarded different traits for different circumstances.

-Diamond mentions in passing that our ancestors, Homo sapiens, who emigrated from Africa some 100,000 years ago may have interbred with Neanderthals (Europe) and Homo erectus (Asia) but fails to consider that this may have had something to do with the subsequent developmental paths of various human groups, most notably the relative distinctiveness of “Caucasoids” (Europe), “Negroids” (Africa), and “Mongoloids” (Asia). The physical dominance of Africans today may conceivably shed light onto how Homo sapiens were able to overtake (and to some extent combine with) the other two species.

-The most trenchant rough spot in Diamond’s argument involves animal domestication. He writes "[Africa’s] own native animals—with the exception of guinea fowl and possibly donkeys and one breed of cattle—proved impossible to domesticate." Yet in the comparative blink of an eye the zebra, ostrich, and warthog have all been domesticated. Even hyenas have been essentially tamed in a single generation. Keep in mind that the equine species now geographically ubiquitous have been under domestication for around 50,000 years and yet within a single generation can become feral and as wild as gazelles. What a sight the first domestication must have been! The Mongolian horse, the Przewalski, now nearly extinct, appears to be the roughest equine out there (look at that beast). It is more than vacuous speculation to assume Africa potentially had the greatest animal resources in the world. Southern Africa is probably site of the world’s most fertile land today, although I am no agronomist and cannot say what advantages it may have had relative to other farming areas thousands of years ago. Diamond does concede Africa has abundant natural resources, especially in the temperate zones.

-Jocularly, Diamond continues: “History might have turned out differently if African armies, fed by barnyard-giraffe meat and backed by waves of cavalry mounted on huge rhinos, had swept into Europe to overrun its mutton-fed soldiers mounted on puny horses.” He is missing the elephant in the room, pardon the pun. Diamond leaves out Hannibal’s excursions against Rome, where elephants were used in battle and also crossed geographical nightmares like the Alps.

-He makes the observation that various ethnic groups in Africa coexist “far better than they do in many other parts of the globe.” Maybe, although the litany of conflicts, from Hutus against Tutsis to the prized meat of Pygmys (though not widely known, cannibalism is pervasive in Africa like nowhere else on earth), the continent is not immune to the ills that plaque us all.

Diamond's theory makes sense, and I'm only nitpicking potential problems that clearly do not sink the argument, but suggest that environment left a biological impression on the people it affected that is not instantly irreversible (assuming it would even be a wise thing to do). As far as that obdurate sujbect goes, cheap DNA sequencing will lead to an explosion of research and correlation analysis to determine what exactly does what. There are some three trillion base sequences in the human genome, and if my math is right that's around infinity billion possible combinations. Finding sequence similarities among the very upper echelon 175-IQers will allow for the understanding of what makes people smart (and in every other area of life--just pondering the possibilities is tiring). The idea of free-will may even be fatally challenged. Who knows?

Diamond ends optimistically about Africa’s future. I am more skeptical, given the continent’s low IQ scores. However, destitute situations are the ones with the most opportunity for improvement, and the industrialized world has made a substantial commitment—some $50 billion in fact. Diamond is spot on when he says development, not just aid, is needed. Insuring nutrition alone could significantly boost cognitive abilities, and would be relatively cheap to distribute. Rhodesia was brutal, but economically it worked. Removing the brutality and replacing it with humanitarianism might do wonders. Another obvious solution to help pull people up, at least in the oil rich west, would be for African countries to instigate an equal dividend based on petroleum revenues to all its residents once per year (or more frequently) like Alaska does here in the US.

The felony rate in the Ocean State is roughly 3%. So the indigents being admitted are around eleven times more likely to have committed violent crime than are Rhode Island natives. It seems commonsensical that gracious hosts willing to put people up on their own buck should be able to at least know who it is they are taking in. The public safety is at risk and prudence is being applied, so it is no surprise that the ACLU has appeared on the scene, interjecting accusations of white racism in an incendiary manner:

Civil libertarians call the checks thinly veiled race and class discrimination against people who have suffered already.

"I think it's happening partly because who these people are and where they came from," said Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU. "The mere fact that people have past criminal records in and of itself doesn't say anything about harm to the community."

Obviously most people who have literally had their lives ripped asunder are decent people who need a helping hand and a place to stay. No one should ever rely on the government to provide anything for them, most especially physical protection. But this country is too humane to leave them out to dry for their failings, and America's generosity is admirable. If there is a silver lining here, it is that the concentration of pathological criminals are no longer concentrated in America's cesspool. Being disparately dispersed across the country will probably make them less dangerous.

In South Carolina, state police checked every evacuee flown there by the government. Of 547 people checked, 301 had criminal records, according to Robert Stewart, state Law Enforcement Division Chief.

The state police in West Virginia said roughly half of the nearly 350 Katrina victims evacuated by the government to that state had criminal records, and 22 percent have a history of committing a violent crime.

In Massachusetts, where about 200 evacuees were flown to a military base on Cape Cod, criminal background checks turned up six sex offenders and one man wanted for rape in Louisiana.

In Texas, with more than 300,000 refugees, local officials have run 20,000 criminal background checks on evacuees, as well as the relief workers helping them and people who have opened up their homes.

In Tennessee, police checked every federal evacuee flown to Knoxville and found outstanding warrants for two people in Louisiana - but Louisiana did not want to extradite them.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

These thoughts come from an online discussion forum (I'm near the bottom) that I thought would be worth saving if for no other reason than to say "I told you so."

Special ed students cost, on average, over twice that of the average student--An astounding $17,000 per pupil. The utilitarian benefit is, of course, considerably less--certainly a net liability. Machiavellian as that sounds, it's fallacious to let a bleeding heart bludgeon the wallet to death. Today, special education consumes 20% of public education spending (used a very liberal source as an antidote to your incredulity :) in the US. The fluffy-feeling this may give you aside, does it make sense to invest the highest amount of resources into the least productive people?

"A rough kind of eugenics has, in fact, been practiced in China for a long time. Several years ago, when I was living in that country, I mentioned Down's Syndrome in conversation with a Chinese colleague. She did not know the English term and I did not know the Chinese, so we had to look it up in a dictionary. 'Oh,' she said when she got it. 'That's not a problem in China. They don't get out of the delivery room.'

As I said: While we are agonizing over the rights and wrongs of it, elsewhere they will just be doing it."

Keep in mind that China has Asian expansionism in its plans (North Korea's tentative promise not to develop nukes means the PRC won't have to worry about Japan and Taiwan going nuclear--notice that China was the country that got North Korea to oblige after the other four countries could not) and in less than eleven years (using US GDP growth of 4% and PRC GDP growth of 9% to future value) China's total economy will be larger than that of the US. Their population also has a higher average IQ than the US, ties with ruthless regimes like Iran, Zimbabwe, and North Korea, and because of the one-child policy recently reneged, millions more young males than young females (as males are more "prized"). I point out the glut of young males because, well, what makes a better army than millions of young males with no one to marry? I'm coming at this with assumed prescience--that the PRC will be the next Soviet Union. Unfortunate, because I love far-Eastern culture and people, but inevitable given the Han's feeling of superiority and the insatiable energy appetite that is going to consume China in the coming years.

They're [the Bush administration] responsible for this big structural deficit, and they're not going away, the deficits aren't. Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our Government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else.

So what if they just got tired of buying our debt? What if the Japanese got tired of doing it? Japan's economy is beginning to grow again. Suppose they decided they wanted to keep some of their money at home and invest it in Japan, because they're starting to grow? We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong.

Preach on, Mr. President! Maybe Michael Moore is on to something when he accuses you of being the greatest conservative politician in a generation. Don't let me interrupt:

We had the lowest African-American unemployment, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded. We had the highest homeownership, highest business ownership, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years.

The homeownership boasts are completely fallacious, however. Bush can brag about having overseen the highest homeownership rates for blacks of any President in US history (49.1% compared to Clinton's highest rate of 47.2%). In fact, the ownership society appears to be having a positive impact in this arena, as all ethnic and racial categories have seen increased rates of homeownership over the last five year.

Clinton goes on to talk about how the Bush tax cuts have caused increased poverty and that it was higher taxes that kept the poverty rate low during the go-go Clinton years. I'll let the rah-rahs snipe back and forth over how well their guys have done while in office. The effect of a President on the economy is overrated, of course. Just follow the stock market--and the technological processes, investment decisions, global factors, etc that it relies on--and you will have your indicator of how well the economy is performing. Presidential policies are a diminutive piece of the overall economic pie. Although it is hardly enlightening, it appears a Democratically-controlled White House and a Republican-controlled Congress enjoy the greatest economic prosperity. A cynic might say that is because in such a situation there is gridlock, and the more impotent the government is, the more the citizenry benefits.

Clinton spoke on the upward trend in poverty rates today, insinuating again that tax policies are the culprit:

This is a matter of public policy, and whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made.

The problem is, Bush has outspent Clinton on poverty entitlements. The 2006 budget calls for an incredible $368 billion for poverty entitlements--that breaks down to an astounding $9,900 per impoverished person! Because it's run by government wastrels, most of that money is spent on ineffective programs rather "efficient" wealth transfers, but the sheer amount is stultifying. The PPP in socialist Cuba is $3,000--in other words, free-market America redistributes over three times as much to its poor as the average Cuban receives in work compensation and from the government dole combined! Sheesh. So, the fiscally responsible Clinton criticizes Bush for giving too much back to people and not spending enough. Why not stick with the criticisms you laid out earlier about Bush's profligate spending habits, and point out what a prodigal President he has been. Promise us you'll force Hillary to reign in spending and keep handouts at a bare minimum, unlike the pseudo-conservative that's in the White House now! During your Presidency, the federal budget grew at an average annual rate of 3% (p30). During your successor's term, it has grown by an average of 7%. Don't tell us Bush is not doing enough--tell us he's doing too much! It's all so inane.

Anyhow, when it comes to increasing poverty rates, the elephant in the room is immigration. Few will state this obvious fact, because the left wants to manufacture voters out of poor Hispanics and the many on the right want cheap labor and/or are terrified of the "racist" moniker. But if the average immigrant's annual income is some $20,000 less per year than that of the average native, what do you think adding more immigrants is going to do the overall average economic health of the nation? See my previous post on the detrimental effect huge Hispanic immigration is having on the US.

In any case, what he said is patently false. In 2003 there were approximately 35.9 million Americans in poverty. Roughly 16 million of them were white (8.2% of the white population)--44% of the total population of impoverished residents. Total poverty numbers for other groups are as follows: Blacks 8.8 million, 24.4% of black population and 24.5% of impoverished population; Hispanics 9.1 million, 22.5% of Hispanic population and 25.2% of impoverished population; Asians 1.4 million, 11.8% of Asian population and 3.9% of impoverished population.

Bill may have been attempting a sleight of hand to swell the numbers of the white impoverished. The Census considers Hispanics in the amalgamated category of "white". There are subsequently categories that break this down to "white, non-Hispanic" (to which I referred to as simply "white" above and will continue to do) and "Hispanic". By using the definition that includes Hispanics, whites comprise 67.7% of those in poverty--close to his 75% claim. Of course, this segment makes up over 85% of the US population so that percentage is still relatively low.

To cut through the obfuscation, I've run the numbers as an index. An index score of 1 for a segment means that as a group, the segment has exactly the same proportion of its members in poverty as does the entire national population as a whole. An index score of .5 means a group has only half as many members impoverished (proportionally) as does the entire country, and an index of 2 would indicate twice the poverty rate for the group compared to the country as a whole. In parentheses is the groups average IQ according to Wikipedia--depending on what data is looked at, the scores may vary by couple of points but center around these scores.

Thus, poverty certainly does come in all colors, which was Bill's point. But blacks are three times as likely to fall into poverty as are whites. Hispanics are nearly as likely as blacks, while Asians are much nearer to whites (as per usual). Poverty rates are inversely related to IQ, and the rates by race almost follow suit, except that Asians have higher average IQs than whites. A plausible cause for the higher poverty rates of Asians versus whites is that Asian Americans on average are losing their cognitive advantage over whites as increasing numbers of Asian immigrants are from South Asia (India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Phillipines) where IQs tend to fall one standard deviation (15 points) or more below IQs of East Asians (China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea). The poverty data is more recent than the IQ data, and consequently the IQs have probably followed (inversely) the changing poverty rates. Grouping all Asian Americans into one category (as large classifications tend to) obturates the diversity within it. Still, this minority is not suffering that dastardly white hegemony and oppression that plagues other groups!

Sunday, September 11, 2005

The finger-pointing has gotten pretty intense. Obviously when something disastrous of this magnitude occurs, no one wants to be the the guy at the helm who oversaw the incompetence. In that sense, Vice Admiral Thad Allen, who has replaced the now defunct Mike Brown, will benefit greatly from being able to slice through red tape secured by the fact that any audacious moves he makes are going to be an improvement over what preceded him.

Bush has taken a hit in the realm of public opinion as the lethargic federal relief efforts have pushed his approval rating below 40 percent. The photo of Bush flying over New Orleans in Air Force One rather than being in the thick of the fray, barking out commands with his sleeves rolled up, does not bestow confidence or show urgency. The incompetence of the state and local officials in Louisiana shows that Bush should have verbally and ostensibly pressed hard to take over, although such a move would have invariably lead to criticism of the macho cowboy pushing aside a southern dame and a minority mayor. When FEMA finally did become mobilized, the stories of equipment laying around while bureaucrats gave speeches surely cost lives.

"It's just so much like Iraq, it's not funny," said Atkinson, of Woodlawn, Ark., "except for all the water, and they speak English."

Said another:

"It's like Baghdad on a bad day," said Spec. Brian McKay, 19, of Mount Ida, Ark.

Said yet another:

"We're having some pretty intense gun battles breaking out around the city," said Capt. Jeff Winn of the New Orleans police SWAT team. "Armed gangs of from eight to 15 young men are riding around in pickup trucks, looting and raping," he said.

With this chaos has come virulent racism directed against whites, as I pointed out in a previous post.

Recapitulating, the government at all levels failed to protect the people. Commit it to memory: The government, Republican or Democrat, Federal or Local, cannot solve your problems. It cannot protect you, and it will not take care of you. Self-reliance is the key to survival. A lesson to take from Katrina includes moving settlements out of the way of natural disasters, not having more people retire to the Florida coastline. There is no reason to rebuild New Orleans, which is sinking, so it can be hammered again a decade from now. Another is to realize that people, and by extension groups of people, are not all alike. The reaction to a disaster like 9/11 where those involved were competent relief workers and well-educated, intelligent business people in the towers sits in stark contrast to the way less intelligent (and by extension chronically poor and drug-addicted, etc) urbanites react in a similar situation. We need policy that addresses these things directly, rather than pretending they don't exist, or tenaciously proclaiming that people have the right to build in stupid locations and then having the federal government (that's you and me) reimburse them for their idiocy.

WALLACE: Senator Landrieu, I want to ask you — and I'll ask you both, but let me start with you — about the local response.

Was it incompetent and insulting for Mayor Ray Nagin to order a mandatory evacuation, but then to leave buses — and we have a picture of them — hundreds of buses idle, so that they could be flooded, instead of using them to get people out.

LANDRIEU: Well, Chris, I was there, as you know, through the whole ordeal with state and local officials, and was right there with Louisiana Democrats and Republicans, city council members, police chiefs, mayors, the governors, and could watch what Haley Barbour was doing and Governor Riley in Alabama. I am not going to level criticism at the local level. These peopledid...

WALLACE: But I'd like you to answer, if you could, this one specific question.

LANDRIEU: Well, I will. I will answer it. I am not going to level criticism at local and state officials. Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane. And it's because this administration and administrations before them do not understand thedifficulties that mayors — whether they are in Orlando, Miami, or New Orleans —face.

LANDRIEU: In other words, this administration did not believe in mass transit. They won't even get people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out...

Don't expect a firestorm over what is obviously being insinuated here because Landrieu is a Democrat. The so-called MSM will not crucify her for violating the bright shining lie that all differences in outcomes are indictments of societal unfairness rather than being biologically based--she has been too vociferous a critic of Bush's handling of Katrina to be thrown overboard. But the politicians are not as oblivious as their politically correct rhetoric would lead us to believe--she's aware of the dearth of human capital in mostly black urban areas.

There were plenty of decent, honest blacks who were victimized during the post-hurricane melee. Pretending that this is solely an issue of government incompetence rather than looking at the real reason for the problems--the populations of people themselves--is endemic in the US. If we just give them more stuff and treat them nicer, everyone will be a model citizen with the ability to be an astronaut or engineer. This isn't Lake Woebegon. People are dying and the country's coffers are being run dry on account of this nonsense.

Bush said the United States had the resources to cover the massive rebuilding costs, and was not looking for foreign aid."I'm not expecting much from foreign nations, because I haven't asked for it. I'm expecting sympathy and maybe some will send cash," he said.

We give Israel $2.6 billion a year in aid, the most of any country on the planet (for good reason, as 6 million Jews potentially have some 400 million or so Arabs bearing down on them--and the former bring a greater absolute number of profound innovations than the latter). And they give us generators? Tents and tarps, Chirac? India gave a cold $5 million to a country whose citizens have twelve times as much as they do. Arkansas is just a state over--Walmart has plenty of camping supplies available. How about a little green? Sri Lanka, poor and convalescing from the tsunami, scraped together $25,000. The EU wants to compete with the US--it is no longer a legitimate friend outside of Great Britain, Poland, and to some extent Italy. We need to cut out losses and insure that

(From Australia's Herald Sun) "People were just staring at them and making suggestions that they were going to kill them." John's sister Susie said he saw shocking acts of violence amid fierce racial tension in the Superdome. "It's turned into a black against white thing," she said. "My brother has witnessed murders, stabbings, rapes . . . it's like a Third World country."

(From the BBC) The graduate economics student was travelling in the US when he was caught up in the devastation of the hurricane. He had also been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme. Mr Trout's brother Jonathan said: "We got a text message from someone whose phone was working which said he was alive but in terrible conditions. "Then last night our mother got a call saying the situation had deteriorated. "He witnessed a good deal of violence, with scuffles going on and people breaking things."The group really feared for their safety because they were being targeted because they were the only white people there.

(Reuters, a British news service similar to the Associated Press) Valenti and her husband, two of very few white people in the almost exclusively black refugee camp, said she and other whites were threatened with murder on Thursday.

"They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill us," she said, sobbing. "They were plotting to murder us and then they sent the buses away because we would all be killed if the buses came -- that's what the people in charge told us this morning."

CHALMETTE, La. — Chalmette has been cut off from the world for six days...The losses were just coming into focus Saturday. A storm surge estimated at 25feet had receded, leaving yellowish watermarks along the retail strip, but partsof the city were under an expanse of water, with a sheen of oil and a sicklysweet smell. On the front of houses, search-and rescue teams had spray-paintedthe numbers of dead found inside. One house had a blue six.

The water rose 10 feet in 10 minutes on the morning of the storm, residentssaid, so fast you could watch a wall of water advancing down residentialstreets. Sheriff Jack Stephens would not estimate a death toll, but spoke ofseveral large groups of people who had died together.

Thirty-one elderly residents of a nursing home died "in their sleep" whentheir facility was flooded, he said. And in a subdivision, rescue personnel hadfound the bodies of 21 people who had tied themselves together, he said,probably in an attempt to evacuate. The scenes were so disturbing that 30 of hisdeputies could no longer work because of fatigue and emotional overload,Stephens said.

The federal response, he said, has been "woefully inadequate." ...Over thenext two days, she and Lobre played endless games of Yahtzee as they waited forthe water to go down. It didn't. What happened instead was this: Boats began topass under their window, driven by local people offering to throw necessities upto them. Batteries sailed up and so did cigarettes."It was like a Mardi Grasparade, but instead of beads, it was food, and lighters, and dry towels," Lobresaid.On the third day, the two hitched a ride on a boat to Chalmette HighSchool, which had been made into a shelter. A woman bore a child there -- namedKatrina -- and dead bodies were stored behind a stage, where the childrencouldn't see them.

Michael Couture, 31, is an avid fan of the reality show "Survivor," andalways thought he would be good at it. What happened over six days, he said, wasa real-life version: For the first few days, most of the stranded people focusedon themselves. But then a community of interests developed. People raided localstores and distributed what they found.

Bruce Velez, a construction worker, made his way to houses all over thecity; among the people he rescued was an elderly woman who had climbed on top ofher refrigerator to escape the rising water.Larry Strahub spent much of the weekwith 17 strangers in an apartment building. Personalities clashed at times, hesaid. But before he left -- he paddled 15 miles to find help on Saturday -- theyplanned a reunion.

And the demographic breakdown of New Orleans? From the US Census: 26.6% non-Hispanic white, 1.5% Hispanic, and 67.3% black. In spite of the ceaseless complaints of a lack of external relief given to the city of New Orleans, Chalmette was hit harder and has received a paucity of attention. Of course, things are relatively well there, as the local human capital far exceeds anything that the state or federal government can do to keep New Orleans' residents from descending into utter chaos.

It is sad to say, but the atrocious situation in New Orleans is not that surprising. Cities with huge black populations tend to descend quickly to third-status (Camden, DC, Detroit, and East St. Louis are other examples) scarcely distinguishable from the deeply impoverished continent of Africa. I am not placing moral blame on the black community--prior to 1964 the fault was largely on the shoulders of whites. But the pathological hip-hop culture, an antipathy towards education, and a broken family structure within black culture today certainly do not aid the already disadvantaged group.

The idea that whites are maliciously targeting blacks in the US is absurd. Black-on-white violent crimes is up to 250 times more common than white-on-black violent crime. Blacks consistently earn less and struggle more in school than their white counterparts. To keep blaming whites for every problem in the world while vehemently denying any genetic contributions to differences in human populations is something the dogmatic blank-slaters have pounded relentlessly for years at the expense of any real solutions. How can you fix a problem when you won't even admit it exists?

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Unable to attempt to heed Steve Sailer's request for a testing of his theory (I only have the student version of SPSS which can't handle large quantities of data) that Republicans tend to do better than Democrats economically after controlling for education, I went at state data. There's not much in the way of red or blue states being disproportionately above or below the national trendline when either percentage of a state with a bachelor's degree or higher or the percentage of a state with a bachelor's degree or higher minus the percentage of the state with less than a high school diploma are compared to the standard of living (graph shows % with bachelor's or more on the x-axis, standard of living on the y-axis). Eyeballing a more detailed breakdown of educational attainment doesn't look promising either.

An odd 'discovery', though, is how strong the correlation between the percentage of a state with a bachelor's degree and the state's standard of living is. For both red and blue states, it's statistically significant. But the trends are in opposite directions. Bush states show a correlation of .61. Kerry states are -.50. Even without DC in the mix, the trend is still downward. Nationally, of course, there exists no statistically reliable relationship between education and the standard of living (as the two camps cancel one another out). Coincidence? Geography? Or is there some reason that red states benefit materially from an educated population while blue states just don't seem to?

Supporters of the American Civil Liberties Union who have become disillusioned with the group's governance are gathering the support of former officials, donors, and other ACLU members to challenge the organization's leadership, according to people involved in the discussions.

The target of the nascent campaign is the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, 40, who took over day-to-day operation of the group in 2001.

Anthony Romero has aggressively brought the ACLU to the forefront of politics by taking the organization in a direction decidedly antipodal to the Bush foreign policy doctrine (he took over just days before 9/11). Unfortunately, it appears the noble cause of ending America's interventionist policy in Iraq has been tainted by perceived deplorable tactics employed by the ACLU (Abu Ghraib trumpeting, refusal to accept grant money that stipulates none of it be given to state-listed terrorists, demands that Guantanamo Bay detainees be released, etc) that strike me as not opposed to nation-building for the sake of the well-being of the US, but in spite of it.

One troubling sign for Mr. Romero is the emergence in the opposition camp of his predecessor, Ira Glasser. Since his retirement in 2001 after 23 years at the helm of the ACLU, Mr. Glasser has had little involvement in the civil liberties group's affairs.

However, he appeared at a board meeting earlier this month where proposals to limit speech by board members were debated....One catalyst for the reform drive was the report from an ACLU committee urging constraints on speech by board members at odds with the organization. One provision said, "A director may publicly disagree with an ACLU policy position, but may not criticize the ACLU board and staff."

Another said board members "should refrain from publicly highlighting" any disagreement with the organization's policies, in part because public dissent could hurt the ACLU's "public support and fund-raising."

The ACLU continues to move away from libertarian ideals (reclinating back to where it began as an apologist for communism and defender of illegal aliens) based on individual freedom of action and toward a position of partisan advocacy for far left causes. The organization's leadership will inevitably have to force consensus as it's positions become less universal in nature.

Contradictions with its mission statement, which reads "To defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States," are going to lead to internal dissent. As an empirical rightist, I sympathize with Mr. Glasser (longtime head of the ACLU) and crew--as I feel Republican leadership has turned its back on Burkean values, so do ACLU atomists feel the organization has become the backer of various special interests rather than of individual freedom.

A non-comprehensive list of positions the ACLU has taken in recent years that are not in line with their raison d'etre (in addition to pushing out free expression within the organization's own ranks):

Mr. Romero said it was not unusual for the A.C.L.U. to grapple with conflicting issues involving civil liberties. "Take hate speech," he said. "While believing in free speech, we do not believe in or condone speech that attacks minorities."

All speech is equal, but some speech is more equal than other speech.

- Opposition to the free action of employers to make business decisions as they see fit. The ACLU wishes to restrict the rights of private entities to conduct standard business operations (background checks, citizenship status, etc). That is, the organization favors governmental interence in the rights of private entities.

Charles Murray wields Ockham's Razor like Zorro wields his sword. He has reshaped America's views on welfare, affirmative action, and the critical importance of intelligence in society. His ideas have contributed enormously, yet they are at their most simple level commonsensical and able to be stated quite pithily.

Welfare fails not because it does not provide materially for those in want, but because it is intrinsically at odds with what it means to live a fulfilling and meaningful life. Contrasting the existence of America's "poor" with that of materially destitute but much richer denizens of other countries illustrates this profoundly.

Affirmative action fails not because it does not have a lasting effect on perceived racial inequity, but because it engenders racial hostility by putting duller minorities with sharper whites (and Asians), all the while doing nothing to help the less endowed portion of minority communities.

Wealth and knowledge inequality stem not so much from differences in external environment as they do from differences in IQ. The irony is that as the global playing field becomes increasingly flat, the disparity between the brightest and dullest is going to expand, not narrow.

The place to start is a blindingly obvious economic reality that no one seems to notice: This country is awash in money. America is so wealthy that enabling everyone to have a decent standard of living is easy. We cannot do it by fiddling with the entitlement and welfare systems -- they constitute a Gordian Knot that cannot be untied. But we can cut the knot. We can scrap the structure of the welfare state.

Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies and converting what remains into a muddle of services, subsidies, in-kind support and cash hedged with restrictions and exceptions, just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back in cash grants to all American adults. Make the grant large enough so that the poor won't be poor, everyone will have enough for a comfortable retirement, and everyone will be able to afford health care. We're rich enough to do it.

Equitable wealth transfer. Ideally, it strikes a compromise between robin hood economics and laissez faire capitalism. Americans will pay income taxes, the wealthy pulling almost all of the weight, but it will be distributed in even amounts to all the citizenry. So you're not disproportionately giving to an indigent's crack habit at the expense of a hard-working janitor struggling to raise a couple of kids.

Murray proposes $7,000 a year in direct transfer, plus $3,000 a year for medical insurance and $2,000 a year for retirement (invested in index funds, which will obliterate the "return" on Social Security over a person's lifetime). This puts everyone at a base above the poverty line. Assuming these benefits begin accruing at the age of eighteen, about three-fourths of the US population would receive them. That comes to $2.7 trillion annually. The 2006 federal budget is only $2.6 trillion, and $700 billion (.7 trillion) of that is for defense spending and interest on the national debt. That's a prodigious shortfall. Murray is aware of this, but points out that in the future it will represent a smaller number than the budget as it is currently drawn up:

The projected costs of the Plan cross the projected costs of the current system in 2011. By 2020, the Plan would cost about half a trillion dollars less per year than conservative projections of the cost of the current system. By 2028, that difference would be a trillion dollars per year.

Unfortunately, that argument didn't sell Bush's privatized social security accounts. Two trillion up front for greater savings in the future is going to meet resistance when the federal deficit grows by $10,000 every second and we drop $700 dollars a year per American just to pay interest on the debt.

Some other concerns I have:

-This places a financial disincentive on having children. If a single man gets the same distribution as a father of four, the latter is going to realize less real benefit. However, this could be a net positive. By essentially taking away welfare programs that reward penury folks for having children, it could close the wealth gap and boost the nation's average IQ. But anything that might lower the national birth rate needs to be critically examined.

-Who is entitled? Only American citizens? What about resident aliens? And illegals? The latter would have to be explicitly denied or it would be a disaster. Legislation would have to bar mendacious laws or judgments granting in-state tuition to illegals.

-Will this have a deleterious effect on job-seeking among the working poor? A couple bringing in $20,000 in cash and benefits plus $4,000 a year for retirement may give up job searching altogether, solidifying a permanent underclass rather than chipping away at it.

He raises some of these concerns vaguely and indicates that he lays out answers to them in his new book, which I will definitely digest in the near future.

Even if it strikes you as idyllic or unworkable, give credit to Murray for bringing the idea up. The second half of his piece goes into how direct payments will inherently foster personal responsibility because everyone will have benefits directly in their control. No one will have an excuse for why they cannot even afford a meal and a change of clothes. It will aid the government in keeping the peace. They will know where your bank account is that the money is transferred to, so if you don't play by society's rules, it'll cost you fifteen grand on top of traditional forms of punishment. He also argues it will create a sense of community: Friends, family, and partners can pool their resources for joint ventures, giving those with otherwise bleak prospects a chance at economic empowerment.

This was written in response to a complaint about Walmart's use of TIFs and skimping on healthcare:

The gifting of land and tax incentives is ubiquitous. You would be hardpressed to find major operations of any corporation that have not been brought to a specific location by the auspices of the local government.

For example, Kansas City TIF (tax increment financing--having the city shoulder some of the company's cost to be recovered down the road in tax revenue generated by the business) expenditures were estimated to be around $40 million in 2004.

But remember that the lauded mom and pop shops pay little in federal income taxes. Tax on the first $50,000 of profits is only 15% and 25% up to $75,000. Walmart, on the other hand, is paying 39% on a fraction of its income and 35% on most of it.

Many mom and pops are not incorporated and are run as sole proprieterships or partnerships with income flowing through to the owners. In Kansas, up to $15,000 brings a rate of only 3.5%--it doubles to 6.45% over $30,000. Clearly big corporations like WalMart have to pay an effective rate of close to that 6.45%, while mom and pops might come out around four or five percent.

That being said, the accusation has the wrong target. The cities that offer bonds or grant land to WalMart are more culpable than the company is. But the city does it because WalMart, even after the municipality's upfront costs, brings an order of magnitude more in revenue and economic activity than the inefficient mom and pop's.

In regards to welfare, 27% of WalMart's employees are either on Medicaid or have SCHIP (for their children) compared to 23% for retailers nationwide. A moderate gap, but not a prodigious one. And again, WalMart deserves blame for taking advantage of corporate welfare policies as much as you or I do for accepting interest-free student loans when we're not struggling to make end's meet.

Speaking at the National Press Club, [AFL-CIO President] Sweeney said the organization is launching similar health care campaigns in more than 30 states. Maryland's law — approved by the General Assembly over Republican Gov. RobertEhrlich's veto objection — is the first in the nation to require large employers, those with at least 10,000 workers, to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on worker health care. Wal-Mart is the only company in Maryland now affected by the law.

This is antithetical to the idea of HSAs or hiring healthier people (and by extension encouraging people to take better care of themselves for occupational reasons, among others).

"What are we going to do about the destruction of good jobs in our country, the jobs that for the past half-century helped us create the largest middle class, the most dynamic economy and the strongest democracy in the history of the world?" Sweeney said in announcing the union campaign.

The U.S. poverty rate was up in 2004, Sweeney said, the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five years in a row.

America has decided to compete in the global marketplace by degrading work and workers through privatization and de-unionization, rather than competing through innovation and ingenuity, said Sweeney, head of the nation's largest association of labor unions.

It takes only a rudimentary understanding of basic economics to realize that a larger labor supply depresses wages and reduces labor's bargaining power. Instituting a merit immigration system to bring in endowed populations concentrated in high value industries would do more for native workers than any amount of wage and perquisite lobbying ever will.

Trent Lott was thrown to the wolves for suggesting, at a birthday party for the late Strom Thurmond, that the US would have been better served if the centenarian had been elected President in 1948:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, wevoted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Because the archaic Thurmond was a segregationalist (how else would he have possibly been elected in Mississippi at the time?), Lott was branded a racist, bigot, and all the other nasty epithets that get thrown at anyone who dare have anything to do with any person who might have at some time in the past said something straying outside the strict belief system of orthodox Cultural Marxists.

Instead they seem content to play a moral superiority game that they cannot possibly win in the end. The boost the Republican Party has enjoyed from the efflorescence of talk radio, the internet, and cable (that is, Fox) news challenging the monolithic leftwing view in the media is being overwhelmed by demographic changes that favor Democrats.

Lott's comments were innocuous even if they were politically foolish. He did not voice support for segragational policies nor make note of Thurmond's previous support for them--he merely paid a rather generic compliment to a Mississippi legislator (Lott, of course, is a Senator from Mississippi) at the senescent guy's birthday party, and he was crucified for doing so.

BET.com users have selected Minister Louis Farrakhan as the 2005 Person of the Year."

An overwhelming percentage of our users agreed that Minister Farrakhan made the most positive impact on the Black community over the past year and chose him as the person most worthy to receive the honor of BET.com's 2005 Person of the Year," said Retha Hill, BET.com's vice president for Content.

Farrakhan was certainly an interesting choice. The leader of the Nation of Islam--which professes that an evil scientist created white devils (with Jews being the earliest white progenitors) from impure blacks--he's had a vision of Colin Powell plotting the destruction of the black race, accused the government of blowing up the New Orleans levees to drown blacks, called Hitler a great man, and Judaism a dirty religion.

He is an overtly black nationalist. I do not blame him for trying to look out for the well being of his extended family nor am I surprised that he has anything but acrimony for white America when he, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, knows that the easiest way to overcome innate disparities is to lobby for wealth transfers, at least in the short-term. Bill Cosby's push for self-reliance as a means of buoying black America is only championed in bigoted circles, of course.

Farrakhan's popularity in the black community should be a tocsin for America--multiculturalism breeds tension between groups and fans the flames of racial hatred. Coupled with democracy, multiculturalism turns the political arena into a special interest spoils system, with demagogues capitalizing on real and perceived differences by promising their particular group special things. Every occurence has a racial component in multicultural areas. Compare the racially-charged LA riots or the Katrina aftermath in New Orleans to the coal miners who recently perished in West Vriginia. In the first two, one large ethnic group lambasted another for prejudice, racism, etc. In the mining tragedy, this element wasn't present because it simply couldn't be--West Virginia is overwhelmingly white.

As Latin America continues to emigrate into the the US, groups that openly fight to secure benefits for Hispanics like La Raza and MechA will continue to gain clout. Affirmative action policies will pinch less endowed whites and Asians harder and harder. Whites will become increasingly aware of their racial identity and organizations like American Renaissance will grow in popularity. Cultural and language barriers will become more pronounced, as the moribund social policy of assimilation bites the dust (what does one assimilate to if there are ten distinctly different cultures to choose from, all of which are encouraged by various members of the polyglot?). Native Americans are the most distinctly separate group, technically constituting entirely different nations. With so many special privileges, Indian tribes are ripe for corruption--see Jack Abramoff. Do we want more of these special privileges for other groups?

America is rushing fullsteam into unchartered waters. Multiculturalism has an awful record (think confiscation of white farms in southern Africa and South America, Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka, Buddhist struggles in southwest China, the Balkans, riots in Australia and France, Islamic terrorism and ethnic enclaves scattered throughout the West, the Sudan, Jim Crow in the South, virulent anti-Judaism in the Middle East, ad infinitum) while the most homogenuous countries suffer little internal strife and enjoy prosperity (Scandanavia and Japan being the most salient examples). Often, when pinned down, multicult open borders enthusiasts will cite the US as the greatest example of a demographic mosaic, yet in the next sentence they will be condemning racial inequality in America and giving props to Kanye West. If the US is sui generis when it comes to successful multiculturalism, I'm definitely not convinced.

It's blatantly intuitive that people tend to gravitate toward those like themselves. Think of your friends--if you are a college graduate (or working your way to that), how many of your friends are doing the same? If you built relationships randomly, we would expect that of your twelve closest friends, two of them are college educated, seven finished high school and then went to work, and three are high school dropouts. Does that reflect reality? Probably not. Chances are most if not all of your friends are collegiates. How about the significant others in your life? How have the relationships where you shared common interests, pursuits, lifestyles, and enjoyed similar traits fared compared to the ones where you've been polar opposites on everything from politics to entertainment to lifestyle habits? The stellar success of EHarmony.com is a testament to the former--are there businesses devoted to matching you up with those the most unlike yourself as possible?

Why would polities be any different? Opposites don't attract on the individual level, and they don't attract on the national level either. Immigrants now account for over 60% of the US' population growth--they will determine the future composition of America. We should insure that they are conducive to the needs--culture, economic, occupational, cognitive, linguistic--of the native population by instituting a merit immigration system that scores potential new arrivals based on factors like English language fluency, occupational training, health, age, criminal record, educational attainment, IQ, and so forth. There are as many as 1.5 billion people who would like to come to the US--we can certainly afford to pick and choose those who will benefit the Union the most. Whether we can afford not to be picky and instead let family reunification, anchor babies, and desperation choose for us is what I'm not so sure about.

"'Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should not apologise or otherwise atone for the murders of the four victims in this case,' Schwarzenegger wrote. 'Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption.'

'Based on the cumulative weight of the evidence, there is no reason to second guess the jury's decision of guilt or raise significant doubts or serious reservations about Williams' convictions and death sentence.'"

Mercifully, however, the Governor did grant clemency of a sort for the families of the three Taiwanese and one white who this black murdered in cold blood for a whopping $120. Oh, you had not heard the ethnicities of the parties involved? It's not surprising. One really has to dig to find it. A little acumen I might offer: If you hear anything about crime involving interracial violence, rest assured it is the case of a white (preferably a male WASP) tormenting a minority of some sort. If, however, race or ethnicity is not reported, two potential situations arise: 1) The crime is intra-racial, or 2) A minority member is committing the crime against members of another racial or ethnic group.

While Williams has putatively 'turned his life around' (and who on death row hasn't?), that is an empty argument for abnegating justice. Legally, as referenced above, there has been no reason to overturn the conviction. Even the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, the most left-wing in the nation, has refused to take up Williams' cause. When a legal verdict is reached by a jury, it needs to be honored unless there is a legitimate legal reason for an injunction or appeal hearing. To void the jury's conclusion simply to appease a bunch of narcissistic Hollywood types is absurd.

Still, I tenuously oppose the death penalty. I'd rather see a chain gang renascence. Set up prisons as token societies where inmates have to do the backbreaking labor that unskilled immigrants largely partake in now. In return for their work, they can 'buy' necessities from prison--things like condiments for food, books, recreational time, and so forth. This would cut down on the need for subsidized cheap labor, introduce a work ethic that many criminals desperately need to have instilled, and probably deter would-be criminals and recidivists more than jailswith weight rooms and PS2s do.

Will there be rioting a la Rodney King in Los Angeles and elsewhere after midnight? Local clergymen are trying to assuage the fervor. Presumably California's police force is ready for the worst. No doubt that some of the underclasses in general and gang members in particular will be eagerly awaiting an excuse to go on a destructive melee. Perhaps Williams is not done wreaking havoc on society just yet.

"These new estimates were developed to help people get a better understanding ofthe burden of preparing their taxes... The IRS is required by law to provide taxpayer-burden estimates."

For form 1040 only, the estimated cost comes in at $121. If schedule A (itemized deductions) and schedule D (capital gains) are included--these are generally more affluent taxpayers, as only 30% of filers itemize--the average is $313. Given that there are 78.8 million filers who pay to have their taxes done, these estimates yield a grand total a few million over $14 billion. Prodigious as that number seems, it is pittance in the scheme of US tax-compliance costs:

"In 2002 individuals, businesses and non-profits will spend an estimated 5.8 billion hours complying with the federal income tax code (henceforth called “compliance costs”), with an estimated compliance cost of over $194 billion. This amounts to imposing a 20.4-cent tax compliance surcharge for every dollar the income tax system collects. By 2007, the compliance cost is estimated, conservatively, at $244.3 billion. However, this estimate does not take into account the recently enacted Economic Growth and Tax Reform Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001. Taking EGTRRA into account shows that the compliance cost could soar as high as $350.2 billion by 2007."

The IRS estimates are only looking at the accounting cost and only for individual filers, as opposed to the economic cost imposed on all entities that have to file (businesses outspend individuals by about 20%). Accounting cost consists of actual dollars (or equivalents) paid, while economic cost incorporates opportunity costs into the mix. That some 5.8 billion hours--or 662,100 years--of wasted time means over 662 millenia worth of Joe American's productivity is discarded every year (increasing perennially) in addition to the actual dollars forked over to tax preparers.

And even this more broadly encompassing estimate is only the tip of the iceberg. What about estate planners, huge CPA firms (445,000 employees at the big four alone), tax attornies, and collection agents involved in avoiding and extracting taxes, respectively? Accountants and attornies are among the select group of high-IQ professions. What are these people, the vast majority of whom have IQs surpassing 120, doing to contribute to human progress? Playing in a perpetual chess match against other high-IQ types on the IRS's 99,000-strong, $10.185 billion annual budget side! What a colossal waste. When their opportunity costs are taken into consideration from the perspective of society at large (not the professional's individual opportunity costs, as they are obviously being remuneratedhandomsely for their services), the tax system-induced loss must be unfathomably astronomical.

I favor a national sales tax to replace the federal income tax, since the US is a consumption-based society. One of the tenets of an ideal tax system is the so-called "wherewithal to pay"--that is, people should only have to pay tax when they have the money to do so (think if you were taxed at the end of the year for the gain in your stock holdings, even though you hadn't sold them--if a significant amount of your investments were in the market, coming up with the cash flow to pay the IRS could become very burdensome).

A sales tax does that--you only pay tax when buying a new product or service. It would generally be progressive in nature, as people with more disposable income tend to spend more, in absolute terms anyway. Under the FairTax plan (23%), all citizens would receive a credit equal to the poverty line for their situation on a monthly basis. Thus, people spending an amount under the poverty threshold would skate tax-free. A national sales tax would also encourage conservation, since only new items would be subject to the tax and it would make the US an even more attractive location for corporations to emigrate to since they would not have to pay based on profits but instead on capital expansion. It would also eliminate every free-marketers favorite object of derision--double taxation.

The flat tax is another option. While it would not fundamentally alter the way the tax system works, the most popular proposals call for an end to deductions and credits in addition to differing tax rates. This would eliminate the need for tax preparation and make tax shelters orders of magnitude more difficult to pull off. With a poverty credit similar to that of the national sales tax, some of the inevitable criticism of its inherent 'unfairness' (since it's equal and all) in not increasing the tax rate in tandem with income would be parried. Steve Forbes thinks he can do it at just 17%.

While intuitively it appears that higher tax rates lead to higher government revenues, it's far from settled. For example, with the Bush tax cuts still firmly in place, 2005 is going to be the highest grossing year on record (p30) for the US government, and the fourth highest when adjusted for inflation. Conceptually, think of two extreme scenarios: Country A taxes its citizens at 5% of income. Country B taxes its citizens at 95% of income. All other things equal, which government do you think pulls in more revenue (while having an exponentially larger and more dynamic economy)?

The slew of time, energy, and manpower (not to mention frustration) that goes into the current tax system can conceivably be avoided rather easily. But every tax change is going to have its winners and losers--and usually it's the potential losers who scream the loudest. The masses need to wake up to this waste and realize it can be fixed.

"But what Wal-Mart's leaders can't seem to grasp is that average Americans are offended by its shameful tactics to boost profits at the expense of the families of hard-working men and women."

The idea that Wal-Mart has been boosting profit is risible in the face of a whopping 3.5% margin (paid registration required). To the contrary, CEO Lee Scott has been criticized for ignoring the bottom line in an attempt to shore up the company's image. The Senator is correct in pointing to (and shrewdly seizing upon) Wal-Mart's stumbling publicity. According to a new Zogby poll, 38% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Wal-Mart, 55% have a less favorable opinion than they did before based on recent news related to the Arkansas-based retail giant, and 56% think Wal-Mart is bad for America. The leaked internal memo discussing ways Wal-Mart could decrease its healthcare costs and increase efficiencies by hiring healthier workers (seems like a fabulous idea to me) and the company's decision to abstain from using Christmas in its advertising have not helped.

"They have used predatory pricing practices to put small companies out of business.Surely, the largest company in the world, which made more than $10 billion in profits last year, can do better by its workers, better by our communities, and better for the American taxpayer."

The problem with this sort of demagoguery is that it ignores the perspective of the consumer. From the vantage point of consumerism, Wal-Mart is a retailing apotheosis. It has everything, is located everywhere, and sells its stuff at bargain basement prices--even its grocery prices are 20% lower than other supermarkets. A Global Insight study found that Wal-Mart saved consumers an astounding $263 billion in 2004 alone. These lower prices coupled with Wal-Mart's state of the art logistical system make it the most attractive outlet to many consumers, particularly those in the lower echelons of the economic ladder. The aforementioned study also found that Wal-Mart's presence decreased at-home food prices 9.1% over the last two decades. In 2003, the average US household spent $3,114 on food annually--thus Wal-Mart has saved Joe American $283 per year just on sustenance. This may mean nothing to corpulent silver-spooners like Kennedy, but for the working class that is substantial. The one-stop shopping also saves consumers time and expenses spent on transportation. This is the reason that the lauded mom-and-pop stores get run out of town when Wal-Mart shows up--they can't give shoppers what they want.

No one is forcing consumers to choose Wal-Mart, nor is anyone forcing 1.3 million Americans to become 'associates'--in a free market system people vote with their collective wallets. If you're peeved at the company's practices, don't own stock, shop, or work there. What gets me is how it is usually supercilious metropolitan types that rail on Wal-Mart. Or it's the unions (the Zogby poll referred to earlier was funded by a union group)--of course, if Wal-Mart became unionized, operational costs would rise, efficiencies would fall, and store growth would stagnate (see GM). And when Wal-Mart advocates something that the Kennedys of the world putatively support, like increasing the minimum wage, the attacks do not relent and instead Wal-Mart just puts off its supporters like myself (though given Wal-Mart's average hourly wage of $9.68, an upping of the minimum wage would hardly increase its costs while giving at least an initial financial boost to a large portion of its shoppers).

Kennedy makes some good points, especially the accolades he gives to Costco for the company's corporate citizenship. And Costco's stock has certainly outperformed Wal-Mart's as of late, as has the company's more prestigious antagonist, Target. Let Americans choose who they want to do business with, invest in, and work for. If Wal-Mart is regarded as too callous or vile the company will sink. Retailing is something that literally anyone can participate in (used Ebay lately?)--it's not like big oil where antitrust issues are pertinent. There's no need for meddling from the likes of Kennedy.

Here's how it comes out with the median:mean ratio taken into account. Just for the heck of it, I color-coded the states to the 2004 Presidential election. There's apparently no meaningful relationship between the propensity to give and voting patterns:

The Catalogue for Philanthropy recently released a report on the generosity of the nation's 50 states. The Bible Belt has enjoyed the positive light this puts them in. However, the methodology is crucial to consider--we can find a more accurate indicator of giving with a little work.

There's a lot at play here. The CFP chart refers to computes the "generosity index" by taking a state's ranking in Average AGI (which is gross income after deductions for things like IRA contributions, education, self-employed business expenses, capital and sec 1231 losses but before the itemized deductions that most people think of when they hear "you can deduct that") and subtracting it by the state's ranking in itemized charitable deductions. A married couple must have at least $10,000 in itemized deductions to even be counted in this index (itemized deductions include just about everything else that's not listed above--medical and misc expenses beyond a % of AGI threshold, property and state taxes, mortgage interest, charitable contributions, etc)--if they have less than $10,000, they just take the standard deduction.

Am I confusing you yet? The IRC (internal revenue code that has all the tax rules) is a ridiculously complicated thing of over 3.4 million words. The bottom line is that only 30% of people in the country itemize--generally these people are at least moderately affluent, because to ring up $10,000 just in deductions, you usually have to make quite a bit. We don't know from this how generously the more modest people in the various states give--we're only looking at the upper-middle and upper crust of each state. Anyway, here's the equation:

AAGI rank - Itemized charitable ded. rate = generosity gap

The CFP then takes each state's gap and ranks them against the other states (so, if a state is the fifth wealthiest but only gives the 25th most, it gets a -20 (5-25)--that's bad. If the state is the 25th wealthiest but gives the 5th most, it gets 20 (25-5)--that's good.) From these gaps, the states are ordered accordingly--the highest gap score (which will be a high positive number like 30) is considered the most generous state, and the lowest gap score (a numerically high negative score like -30) is considered the least generous.

The index is problematic in its computation. Take Conneticut, the highest earning state in the country, to illustrate: Using the formula, we see:

Without even telling you how Conneticut ranks in charitable giving, do you see a problem here? The best the state can hope to get, if it is the biggest giver in the country, is a gap of zero. Intuitively you may have realized that the total gap of all states combined is going to average zero (some having a positive (generous) score, some with a (cheap) negative). Thus, all Conneticut can hope for is to rank smack in the middle, even if it gives the most. Conversely, Mississippi, the nation's poorest state, can do no worse than ranking smack in the middle (AAGI 50 - Avg giving 50 = gap of 0).

Not suprisingly, Mississippi came in first overall (highest gap score of 45). And Conneticut finished a lousy 44th (-25 gap). So the index is rigged heavily in favor of poorer states--the entire South, the poorest region in the country, is within the top 50%.

A more accurate indicator of giving, (at least for the upper crust of each state that this report included), is to take the total amount of money each state gave in itemized charitable contributions and divide that by the number of people in each state who gave. (Ex: If in state A there was $1,000 total given and ten people who gave, this would come to $100. In state B, there's $500 given but twenty people give, and we get $25.) Graciously, CFP has their excel data available. Running the numbers this way puts Utah way on top, $2,110 (Mormons are apparently magnanimous people). The next closest is New York at $1,440.

But that's still not quite fair, because making $200,000 in New York is not comparable to making $200,000 in Utah. Our Mormon buddy is going to find it easier to dole out the cash, because after the cost of living takes its toll, he has more money leftover than the New Yorker. On the flip side, there are more people who make big big money in New York than in Utah, who even with the high cost of living have a chunk of change to potentially give out.

Thus, we need to take standard of living into account. That is, if people live in a place like Minnesota, where income is high relative to the cost of living (great standard of living), they should be expected to give more than people in Cali, where income is low relative to the cost of living (austere standard of living). Throwing that into the mix, here's how the state's come out (this isn't perfect and slightly favors states with more income inequality, but in my estimation it's much more accurate than the way the data has been presented by the CFP):

Utah still comes out on top, but just by a hair. Sheesh, 35th--I'm a little embarrassed :)

I'm going to do a little more with this, but at first glance there doesn't seem to be any clear geographical edge, although the bottom states are mostly red. However, blue states tend to have more income inequality than red states--I'm going to adjust for that next and then I'll post the list with the difference between mean and median income taken into account.

It might be brought up was that more people in Mass gave than in places like Mississippi. This is not surprising, because nominally people in the Northeast make more than people in the South, and the federal tax guidelines do not take buying power into account (it's easier to come up with $10,000 of expenses in the NE than in the South b/c it costs more to live there and you're making more). But with the SOL taken into account, the disruption this causes in the data should be attenuated substantially.

Plant a seed of pathology, cultivate it, and watch it sprout. The gansta rapper who goes by the pseudonym "50 Cent" stars in a movie that has provided a forum for violence:

One Pittsburgh-area movie house has said get lost to 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' after a fatal shooting.

The Loews Cineplex in West Homestead yanked the rapper's controversial semi-autobiographical flick on Thursday, a day after a 30-year-old man was gunned down near a concession stand.

The man, Shelton Flowers, had come to the multiplex just east of Pittsburgh for the opening night of Fiddy's film debut. Police say Flowers got into an argument with others inside the bathroom around 11 p.m. The altercation spilled out into the concession area. Gunshots erupted and Flowerswas struck twice.

He was taken to an area hospital, but doctors were unable to save him.

That there are so many black celebrities glorifying the culture makes survival at 'ground zero' that much harder. Better not to have such 'role models' at all. Hispanics, for example, have very few celebrities to look up to compared to blacks--consequently, to some degree, Hispanics are more apt to work hard and live modestly. Blacks on the other hand see behavior that basically relegates them to a lifetime of poverty put on a pedestal and imitate it. It's disgusting. The black community needs less 50-Cent and more James Earl Jones.

In addition to the gansta-glory lifestyle, the 70% out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks mean that most black children do not have a stable father figure. This makes them more vulnerable to the culture's more pernicious influences, and deprives them of a role model who gets up every morning and goes off to work.

"And having China and Japan owning large amounts of America debt is unsettling," which made me decide that I should get my pet idea officially out so as to take credit for the one bit of perspicacity I might possess while I have the chance. I responded:

But we can always pull the debt back into US hands with a little yankee ingenuity. I'd create something called "Patriot Bonds" that the US government would sell exclusively to US citizens. With the money raised from this, the treasuries held by Asian banks could be bought back. If these Asian banks tried to buy the Patriot Bonds up from American holders, that's fine too. Just perpetually issue more, enriching US citizens in the process, until the Asian banks grow weary of taking a loss. I'm not sure how that would play out in the financial world, as it's an original idea I haven't heard from anyone else. But conceptually it seems like it would work if things got out of control.

Since politics will decide how much of the reform proposal gets through, its makes sense to look at the political implications. Seems to me that the first proposal (see page 5 for a summation of the new proposals), the only one that has a real shot of attracting actionable attention, would do much to help grow the Republican voter ranks.

First, it would end the subsidization of states with high state taxes by the states with low state taxes (requesting a synonym for the word 'state'!) Thus, states with a higher cost of living would likely have to decrease their state tax rates. Less money paid in taxes means more money to do things like start (or grow) a family. And a bigger family means mom and dad want politicians who espouse traditional values (easy to screech at the Boy Scouts for banning gay scout masters when you're childless, but when your son is heading off into the woods with one your perception changes).

Second, mortgages over $412,000 losing the deduction mean homes in cities on the coasts (Democratic bastions) are going to have a new economic disincentive--time to move to the cheaper inner flat lands and in the process start voting Republican.

No more pesky AMT. This helps sustain the middle class. Coupled with the fact that the plan is least friendly to the super rich, we have a recipe for more net income equality. And income parity (along with educational and cultural parity) means more Republican votes.

Small business owners are a Republican stalwart. The Simplified Income Tax Plan (first proposal) lowers the top rate small businesses can be taxed at to 33% and would allow most small businesses to use simple cash-basis accounting (deduct it from the books when you pay it and add it to the books when you receive it, instead of all that pesky stuff like deferrals and accruals).

Does anyone see a silver lining in this proposal for the Democrats? I don't. Chuck Shumer, who in my estimation is currently the sharpest limelight Democrat, certainly wasted no time in lambasting the proposal.

Hopefully some simplification will occur. The social incentives or disincentives are a point of argument, but cutting down on the estimated $190 billion spent each year to comply with federal tax laws is a deadloss we will all be better off without having (except maybe tax accounting firms like H&R Block).

The felony rate in the Ocean State is roughly 3%. So the indigents being admitted are around eleven times more likely to have committed violent crime than are Rhode Island natives. It seems commonsensical that gracious hosts willing to put people up on their own buck should be able to at least know who it is they are taking in. The public safety is at risk and prudence is being applied, so it is no surprise that the ACLU has appeared on the scene, interjecting accusations of white racism in an incendiary manner:

Civil libertarians call the checks thinly veiled race and class discrimination against people who have suffered already.

"I think it's happening partly because who these people are and where they came from," said Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island ACLU. "The mere fact that people have past criminal records in and of itself doesn't say anything about harm to the community."

Obviously most people who have literally had their lives ripped asunder are decent people who need a helping hand and a place to stay. No one should ever rely on the government to provide anything for them, most especially physical protection. But this country is too humane to leave them out to dry for their failings, and America's generosity is admirable. If there is a silver lining here, it is that the concentration of pathological criminals are no longer concentrated in America's cesspool. Being disparately dispersed across the country will probably make them less dangerous.

In South Carolina, state police checked every evacuee flown there by the government. Of 547 people checked, 301 had criminal records, according to Robert Stewart, state Law Enforcement Division Chief.

The state police in West Virginia said roughly half of the nearly 350 Katrina victims evacuated by the government to that state had criminal records, and 22 percent have a history of committing a violent crime.

In Massachusetts, where about 200 evacuees were flown to a military base on Cape Cod, criminal background checks turned up six sex offenders and one man wanted for rape in Louisiana.

In Texas, with more than 300,000 refugees, local officials have run 20,000 criminal background checks on evacuees, as well as the relief workers helping them and people who have opened up their homes.

In Tennessee, police checked every federal evacuee flown to Knoxville and found outstanding warrants for two people in Louisiana - but Louisiana did not want to extradite them.

Katrina and the blame game (September 11, 2005)The finger-pointing has gotten pretty intense. Obviously when something disastrous of this magnitude occurs, no one wants to be the the guy at the helm who oversaw the incompetence. In that sense, Vice Admiral Thad Allen, who has replaced the now defunct Mike Brown, will benefit greatly from being able to slice through red tape secured by the fact that any audacious moves he makes are going to be an improvement over what preceded him.

Bush has taken a hit in the realm of public opinion as the lethargic federal relief efforts have pushed his approval rating below 40 percent. The photo of Bush flying over New Orleans in Air Force One rather than being in the thick of the fray, barking out commands with his sleeves rolled up, does not bestow confidence or show urgency. The incompetence of the state and local officials in Louisiana shows that Bush should have verbally and ostensibly pressed hard to take over, although such a move would have invariably lead to criticism of the macho cowboy pushing aside a southern dame and a minority mayor. When FEMA finally did become mobilized, the stories of equipment laying around while bureaucrats gave speeches surely cost lives.

"It's just so much like Iraq, it's not funny," said Atkinson, of Woodlawn, Ark., "except for all the water, and they speak English."

Said another:

"It's like Baghdad on a bad day," said Spec. Brian McKay, 19, of Mount Ida, Ark."

Said yet another:

"We're having some pretty intense gun battles breaking out around the city," said Capt. Jeff Winn of the New Orleans police SWAT team. "Armed gangs of from eight to 15 young men are riding around in pickup trucks, looting and raping," he said.

With this chaos has come virulent racism directed against whites, as I pointed out in a previous post.

Recapitulating, the government at all levels failed to protect the people. Commit it to memory: The government, Republican or Democrat, Federal or Local, cannot solve your problems. It cannot protect you, and it will not take care of you. Self-reliance is the key to survival. A lesson to take from Katrina includes moving settlements out of the way of natural disasters, not having more people retire to the Florida coastline. There is no reason to rebuild New Orleans, which is sinking, so it can be hammered again a decade from now. Another is to realize that people, and by extension groups of people, are not all alike. The reaction to a disaster like 9/11 where those involved were competent relief workers and well-educated, intelligent business people in the towers sits in stark contrast to the way less intelligent (and by extension chronically poor and drug-addicted, etc) urbanites react in a similar situation. We need policy that addresses these things directly, rather than pretending they don't exist, or tenaciously proclaiming that people have the right to build in stupid locations and then having the federal government (that's you and me) reimburse them for their idiocy.

WALLACE: Senator Landrieu, I want to ask you — and I'll ask you both, but let me start with you — about the local response.

Was it incompetent and insulting for Mayor Ray Nagin to order a mandatory evacuation, but then to leave buses — and we have a picture of them — hundreds of buses idle, so that they could be flooded, instead of using them to get people out.

LANDRIEU: Well, Chris, I was there, as you know, through the whole ordeal with state and local officials, and was right there with Louisiana Democrats and Republicans, city council members, police chiefs, mayors, the governors, and could watch what Haley Barbour was doing and Governor Riley in Alabama. I am not going to level criticism at the local level. These peopledid...

WALLACE: But I'd like you to answer, if you could, this one specific question.

LANDRIEU: Well, I will. I will answer it. I am not going to level criticism at local and state officials. Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane. And it's because this administration and administrations before them do not understand thedifficulties that mayors — whether they are in Orlando, Miami, or New Orleans —face.

LANDRIEU: In other words, this administration did not believe in mass transit. They won't even get people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out...

Don't expect a firestorm over what is obviously being insinuated here because Landrieu is a Democrat. The so-called MSM will not crucify her for violating the bright shining lie that all differences in outcomes are indictments of societal unfairness rather than being biologically based--she has been too vociferous a critic of Bush's handling of Katrina to be thrown overboard. But the politicians are not as oblivious as their politically correct rhetoric would lead us to believe--she's aware of the dearth of human capital in mostly black urban areas.

There were plenty of decent, honest blacks who were victimized during the post-hurricane melee. Pretending that this is solely an issue of government incompetence rather than looking at the real reason for the problems--the populations of people themselves--is endemic in the US. If we just give them more stuff and treat them nicer, everyone will be a model citizen with the ability to be an astronaut or engineer. This isn't Lake Woebegon. People are dying and the country's coffers are being run dry on account of this nonsense.

Solutions for KatrinaA few of our pals from the venerable religion of peace are praising Katrina, calling it deserved punishment for our sins and the US support of the "parasitic" state of Israel (someone may want to tell the inbred sand simian that the Gaza Strip and West Bank rely on foreign aid for an astounding 90% of their sustenance while oil-dry Israel is one of the few--and the only nation to do so without heavy reliance on petroleum--economic powerhouses in the region). I'm consternated as to why anyone would build a city next to the ocean and pincered by an enormous lake in one of the most turbulent places on earth below sea level, but the sore is too trenchant to dwell on that at the moment.

But what could cover the cost of Katrina in full (with more than a pinch leftover)? US foreign aid for one year. The US magnanimously shells out $19 billion a year to countries all over the globe (twice that of the runner-up, the amazing country of Japan). By drying up the funds for a year we could give a reality check to the prodigous anti-American sentiment (don't bite the hand that feeds you!) and ameliorate Katrina's damage in one fell swoop. Instead, I fear we will hear for weeks of looting, insufficient funds, suffering, the need for more FEMA funding, the dangers of global warming, etc.

The Paul Revere Society has a list of a few more cogent ideas that don't involve lucrative no-bid contracts or huge amounts of government expenditures.